Happy New year “Anno Domini, Gregorian year 2017”.

The need for measuring the time precisely was acutely felt by human race when it shifted from being a “Hunter Gatherer Society” to “Agrarian Society”. The ancient farmers needed to know when to plant and when to reap, the mandarins of religion peddlers needed to know when to celebrate this planting & reaping.

So, they looked up for guidance and found a convenient fix in lunar month, which remains a simple observation for laymen as well. Then they also observed that seasons approximately corresponds to 12 such lunar month and hence the starting of a year. The seasons started shifting and some early scientists observed two equinoxes in a years’ time and counted the days between them as 365, a solar year. Hence the start of lunar month & solar year and adjustment of the two.

The most colorful & talked about example of this remains a “Merry Month of Mercendonious” from Roman era. This “Leap Month” was added after February of every other year, called Mercedonius. Everyone liked this extra month and another paycheck but the process was arbitrary and gleefully abused by the officials for their petty benefits. Finally, Julius Caesar put a stop to this madness in 46 BC and devised a standardized Roman Calendar with 365 days and extra days in February every fourth year. This is very close to actual solar year and departs by only 11 minutes off each year.

This very calendar was later adopted by Christian Church with the modification of start year. The bible is not very specific about the year & date of “Birth of Jesus Christ” and estimates vary from 1st Century BC to 4th Century BC. So much for accuracy of dates.

By 16th Century, this nominal 11 minute per year difference became 10 days and Julian calendar had fallen behind solar calendar. The catholic church was concerned about the “Date of Easter”, so in1582, Pope Gregory XIII ordered this 10 days’ adjustment but left the week day convention unchanged. The date jumped from 4th Oct Thursday 1582 to 15th Oct Friday 1582 missing the dates in between. The pope also changed the definition of leap year and declared that century years will not be leap years unless its also divided by 400. So, year 1700, 1800,1900 etc. will not be a leap year but year 1600, 2000 etc. will remain leap year.

These corrections have made calendar year and solar year close but still the difference of one day in 3030 years remains. However, there is no consensus on making changes as of now. The scientists keep adjusting the year by adding seconds or other such adjustments. The human history may not look at these changes and suggest modifications in calendar couple of centuries down the line.

Talking about resistance to change, the changes proposed by Gregorian was not accepted by many countries immediately, while America & England held out till 1752, Russia adopted it only in 1918.

One may ask what all this colorful history has to do with present, next time when we read some date in history, we may have to read & interpret it carefully, applying corrections based on date, calendar used as well as country. The task becomes even more complicated as many countries used different calendar for civil and religious needs. So much just for trying to figure out date from the past.

The debate does not end here, even in modern world new calendars are being proposed, the most recent remains “Holocene Calendar” proposed in 1993 and amendment proposed by “International Union of Geological Sciences” as recent as in 2013. The other interesting calendar remains “Unix Time”, which defines time in seconds and can be checked on any Unix system. So much for a calendar, lets enjoy the moment and one more reason to celebrate. 

May in year 2017 brings new achievements & success, new reasons to celebrate life and bless us with Health, Wealth and Happiness.